2: A Night in the Barn [Sad]
((Prompt: How to lose a cutie mark.))
Much like her father, John Appleseed Smith, Green Apple Smith—known as “Granny” ever since the birth of her grandchildren—tended to have an early bedtime. 'Early to bed and early to rise,' he used to say, 'makes a pony healthy, wealthy, and wise.' She lived by that pearl of wisdom, and it had served her well through her many years.
Tonight, though, Granny Smith couldn't sleep.
She laid awake in her bed, staring at the wooden ceiling above her. Moonlight cast the timbers in a soft blue. A gentle breeze tugged and teased at the curtains through the open window. It made the room a little bit too chilly, and it occurred to her that she should probably shut the window, lest she wake up shivering in the morning.
She remained in bed. Her scratchy wool blanket made her itch under her coat. The quiet sounds of nighttime at the farm came to her. Low creaks from the old bones of the farmhouse. Soft mutters from the pig pen outside as the animals stirred in their sleep. Crickets calling out to one another across the fields. If she listened closely, she could hear the breaths of her family drifting in from the hallway. Just three sets of lungs now, not five.
Granny shivered in her bed. She really ought to close that window. There was no sense in catching a cold because she was too stubborn to get out of bed and take a couple steps across her room. She let out a quiet sigh and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
She paused before her hooves touched the floor. Her ears perked up as she heard little hooves making their way down the hallway. The hooves clattered down the stairs, and the front door swung open. Granny Smith got out of bed and looked out the window to catch a flash of orange as it darted out to the barn.
She chewed the inside of her cheek, watching as yellow lantern light spilled out of the barn door. The shadow of her granddaughter moved back and forth across the square of light, accompanied by metallic clangs and rattles—the sound of a filly rummaging through the storage shelves in the barn.
Granny Smith drew a long breath and left her bedroom. She stepped silently down the stairs, careful not to wake her other two grandchildren, and pulled an old shawl over her shoulders before stepping outside.
She found Applejack in the center of the barn floor, grunting in frustration as she spun around, a pair of shears in her mouth. The filly kept trying to move the shears to her flank, but lacked the flexibility to reach, so she ended up looking like a dog trying to chase its tail.
“Applejack, sweetie,” Granny Smith said. She winced at how hoarse and reedy she sounded. Celestia, she was getting old already. “What are you doin' with those sheep shears?”
Applejack froze. A moment of panic crossed her face, giving her the expression of a filly who was caught doing something she wasn't supposed to do, but it was quickly replaced by a sudden hardness in her eyes. She spat the shears out into her forehooves. “I'm gettin' rid of my cutie mark,” she said sullenly.
Granny slowly took another step into the barn. “Now, why would you wanna do a thing like that?”
“'Cause,” Applejack said, staring at the shears. “You said my mark means family.”
Granny Smith nodded. “That it does, hon. Yer an Apple, sure as sugar.”
“Ma an' Pa are gone,” said the filly. She tried to pick up and use the shears with her hooves, meeting with no more success than she'd had with her mouth. Frustrated, she threw the tool at the wall. “Ain't no family no more.”
The old mare's breath caught. Her knees threatened to buckle as memories of yesterday's funeral broke free of the wall she had built around them and flooded her mind. She sank to her haunches, and for a while, she couldn't tell which of them was the crying filly and which was the heartbroken old mare.
But through her blurry tears, she saw a pair of green eyes, wide with shock at seeing their grandmother break down and weep. That gave Granny an anchor to grab onto and haul herself back up. She pushed herself back onto her hooves.
Granny Smith wiped her muzzle, and pulled her shawl off, draping it over Applejack. “You keep them apples, hon,” she said, sniffing. “We're still a family. Don't you ever doubt that.”
Applejack leaned into her, hugging her leg. Tears flowed freely from her eyes. “I miss 'em so much,” she sobbed into her green coat.
Granny wrapped a hoof around her. “I know, dearie. I do too. I do too.”
Curled up with her granddaughter in a pile of hay in the barn, Granny Smith finally found sleep.
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Green Apple Smith. Why'd you change her name?
3101175
images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120111223953/mlp/images/thumb/d/d5/Young_Granny_sightseeing_S02E12.png/640px-Young_Granny_sightseeing_S02E12.png
Because she was a filly, once, and must have been called something other than 'Granny' at one point.
3101116 Who knows, maybe she has a few rows of strawberries she grows as a side project.
3101012
3101225
But why change Smith Apple? Why change the last name at all?
3101225 Meh. I think it's more fun if her given name is "Granny Smith." They named her after the cultivar. Maybe it was awkward before she had grandchildren.
3101255 Now I'm confused. In what way do you think I changed her last name?
Wait, for clarity's sake, what are you saying Granny Smith's name is supposed to be? Because it doesn't seem like an incredible leap to go from Granny Smith to Green Apple Smith.
3101404
You went from Smith Apple to Green Apple Smith. That's pretty far off.
3101401 Poor G. S. would've been teased a lot by her peers.
Ohmygosh, Conspiracy Theory time! What if she's not actually AJ's grandmother? She's just an aunt or something, and they only call her Granny because that's her name?
3101436 Where do you get "Smith Apple?" Where does that come from? When has she been called that, and by whom?
3101437 I read a story once where she actually de facto adopted all three of them and that's why their parents aren't around.
Like she found Mac after a train crash and AJ and AB were both abandoned at the Acres.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/29131/three-little-apples
Yeah that's right, Bookplayer.
3101443
She's called Granny Smith. They're the Apple family. Cut the Granny. What do you get? Smith Apple.
3101479 I...
Okay, I see where you're coming from, now. That's one possible interpretation of her name, yes. But it isn't the only one. Not everyone in the Apple family necessarily has "Apple" as their last name.
My headcanon has always been that Smith was her last name, and she's a part of the Apple family by marriage. The thought never occurred to me that Smith would be her first name, as it really isn't first name material.
Dang, pony names get more complicated than you would think...
3101565 I've always figured that they aren't suppose to have last names. It's a common thing in our society, but it wasn't always, and there are still cultures that don't really do surnames. For instance, in Iceland children typically take as their "surname" one of their parents' name followed by "son" or "daughter." "Danielsdottir" or "Bjornson."
So it makes a load of sense to me that they don't have them at all. Twilight Sparkle isn't Twilight from the Sparkle family, she's just Twilight Sparkle. That's her full given name. Some ponies have two word names, others don't.
3101565
I'm pretty sure it was the writer's intent to make Granny's name a reference to the apple cultivar.
3101699 Yes, that's obviously what her name references, but that doesn't make her name "Smith Apple."
...Look, I'm getting tired, and this is a really, really minor point that doesn't affect anyone's life. Can we just agree to disagree here?
3101635 I dunno. I mean, you have families like Twilight's, where her name and her brother's don't have an obvious connection. But then you have families like the Cakes and the Pies. They share surnames within their families, so... are they exceptions, or do most ponies have surnames that we just don't hear? Depending on the formality of the setting, you can go a while without hearing anyone's last name here in 'merica, but people still have them.
I figure using surnames is a pretty harmless bit of fanon for the most part. (Except when it sparks arguments like the above, I guess...)
3102102 Strictly speaking, only the Cakes actually apply in that example. We don't have any in-show names for Pinkie's folks, and Pinkie is the only one named Pie, unless you count the off-hand reference to "Granny Pie" that is never elaborated on in any way. So other than the cakes we really don't have any concrete, in-show example of a "surname." And the cake thing could simply be a naming thematic (And in the case of Carrot and Cup, possibly a coincidence)
Anyway, I don't really care until people start stretching their asses off to slap a surname on everyone. Like when they start calling Shining Armor "Shining Armor Sparkle," and crap like that. THAT gets annoying.
YES. YES YES YES. THIS IS FINALLY HERE. =D
<- all the Applejack.
Thank you for writing this. =3
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I saw the little debate about what Granny Smith's actual name is, so I figured I'd jump in to say that before Family Appreciation Day, I found it morbidly amusing to believe that Granny Smith isn't actually old, but rather is the oldest sister of the family, but with some sort of aging disease, like pony progeria. So then naming her "Granny" was just an unfortunate irony.
Maybe that variety of apples isn't called exactly the same thing to them, and her name is actually "Greenie Smith", but they always pronounce it sloppily. I suppose that's pretty close to "Green Apple" too, really.